“_It may be fire; on the morrow it will be ashes._”—ARABIC
PROVERB.
From dawn till dusk the day of festival had been passed in brief,
light-hearted excursions into the desert, sports, and those infantile
amusements so dear to the complex Oriental mind, during all of which
Zarah had walked amongst her men with Ralph Trenchard at her side.
Anticipating the great feast which would be spread for them an hour after
sunset, the men refrained from eating more than a handful of dates,
whilst drinking innumerable cups of black coffee, so that they moved
about restlessly during the day, walking lightly and talking excitedly,
with eyes which shone like polished stones.
They chased each other like goats over the rocks, wrestled friendly-wise
like boys, inspected the cooking-pots and worried, almost to death, the
patient, downtrodden womenfolk, whose only share of the entertainment
would be the scraps left over from the feast.
So mercurial became the atmosphere towards sunset that the men roared
with laughter when, laden with a bowl of spicy stew, of which the chief
ingredients were kangaroo-rat and rice, the fourth wife of Bowlegs
slipped on the steps and immersed herself in the succulent mess. They
picked her up and, in all fun, threw her into the river, and stripped
and dived in after her, fighting each other for the privilege of saving
her, before she disappeared into the cavern through which the river
raced. They fought each other light-heartedly. They looked upon Zarah
the Beautiful more in the light of a trust from the dead Sheikh whom
they had loved than their real leader. Superstition and animal magnetism
bound them to her more than anything else, and they saw no harm in her
marrying the white prisoner for a space, so long as there should be
nothing permanent in the union.
Everything had been arranged for a happy ending to the day.
After the feast Zarah and her white lover would appear, followed by one
of the many bands of the _Ghowazy-Barameke_, which are formed from a
certain tribe of hereditary prostitutes who wander through city, town and
village and from oasis to oasis.
Following that diversion, the Patriarch would arise, clothed in new
raiment, to acquaint the white man of the honour which the community
intended to confer upon him, incidentally allowing him to understand
that, if he liked, he could choose death in preference to tying a
tiger-cat to his hearthrug.
Not that they thought he would for one moment.
They knew of the long hours the two had spent together far into the
night; of the rides _à deux_ they had taken in the desert at sunrise,
sunset, and in the light o’ the moon; had seen him clasping the girl to
his heart after the passing of the poisonous pestilence only seven days
ago, and, quite naturally, had put their own construction upon it all.
Who wouldn’t?
And knowing as much about the Western mind as their mistress, were just
as completely at sea as she.
Having seen nothing of Helen since the night when Al-Asad had whipped
them into fury with the tales of her ingratitude and mocking, and with
other and more interesting things than her death upon their minds, they
had ceased to think about her; in fact, if it had not been for the hatred
of their womenfolk, which had been roused by the Nubian’s tales of her
mocking of them, some of them would have quite willingly sent her back to
Hutah. They were too well-fed, too secure, for hate or love to endure.
They worried about nothing, yet a certain restlessness and incertitude
caused them to press about Ralph Trenchard when he walked, most
friendly-wise, amongst them this day of festival; to lightly finger his
clothes, to brush against him and to look at him in the strange, unseeing
manner of the Oriental, lost in contemplation.
So mercurial became the atmosphere after the feasting in the great Hall,
where the men filled the vacuum caused by abstinence with highly spiced
viands and wines forbidden by the Prophet, that it required but a spark
to set their minds ablaze.
Replete, they lay upon the floor chiding and tormenting the elder and
more ugly of the women, who ran amongst them with braziers and coffee or
with bowls of water for the washing of hands, whilst the younger ones
sped hither-thither in the task of clearing away the _débris_ of the
feast before the advent of the mistress they so sorely dreaded.
Al-Asad sat cross-legged upon the floor near the steps leading up to the
dais. Nude, save for the loin-cloth, he looked a giant amongst the men
who, barefooted or sandalled, with black or striped kerchief round the
head, lounged in the long shirt, open to the waist and bound about the
middle by the leather thong, universally worn by the Arab. The Patriarch,
wrapped in a cloak which added much to his dignity, sat upon a pile of
cushions near the first of the columns. Blind Yussuf sat upon the floor
against the wall, with “His Eyes” beside him.
Following upon the blind man’s whisper of Helen’s name one whole long
week ago, the subsequent and strange behaviour of “His Eyes” had given
Ralph Trenchard cause to think.
The dumb youth would touch him upon the arm to attract his attention,
then touch his face and point insistently at the rock wall behind which
Helen lived, and, illiterate, as are most Arabs, would shake his head
when offered pencil and paper.
He had tried vainly by sign to acquaint the white man of the white
woman’s presence in the camp, a piece of self-constituted diplomacy which
would have much displeased Yussuf.
The mercurial atmosphere had affected Ralph Trenchard.
True, he had not subsisted upon a handful of dates and unlimited cups
of strong coffee throughout the day, but Yussuf’s whispered word, the
youth’s strange pantomime, a certain watchfulness he noticed amongst the
men, and an extraordinary solicitude for his comfort and welfare on the
part of Zarah, had wellnigh brought him to the limit of endurance during
the past week. The novelty had worn off, the salt had lost its savour,
and he had determined, poor, unsuspecting soul, as he waited to make his
way to the great Hall to witness the dancing, to start for Hutah within
the next ten days.
In one word, everyone was on tenter-hooks this festive eve, and as ready
to fly at each other’s throat as any two wild beasts of the desert. The
rock-pigeons, sparrows, hoopoes and other birds which abounded in this
watered sanctuary in a desert waste rose in clouds at the ringing shouts
of laughter and ribald jokes with which the men greeted Zarah’s herald,
the camp jester, in the misshapen form of a dwarf holding a veritable
tangle of black and white monkeys. Following him came four handsome
youths carrying gigantic circular fans of peacock feathers, and after
them fifteen little maids—who ought to have been abed—with bowls of
perfumed water, which they sprinkled on the floor.
Then the men sprang to their feet and shouted, until Helen, alone,
desperate from the solitude of the last terrible week, ran to her door,
only to be pushed back, and none too gently, by the surly negress, who
longed inordinately to be with her sisters as they devoured the remains
of the great feast.
Zarah entered alone, her immense jewel-encrusted train sweeping like
a flood over Yussuf’s feet as he crept stealthily along the wall and
slipped through the door into the night.
For an instant she stopped so that the men should fully take in the
beautiful picture she made against the flaring orange lining of her train.
Her limbs showed snow-white through the transparent voluminous trousers,
her body, bare save for the glittering breast-plates and jewelled bands
which held it, shone like ivory, whilst she seemed to tower, even amongst
her men, owing to the mass of black and orange osprey which sprang from
the centre of her jewelled head-dress.
Fifteen little boys—who too ought to have been abed—spread wide her train
as she walked slowly over the wonderful mosaic floor, with all the grace
of her Andalusian mother, between the rows of shouting men. She stayed
for one moment as she drew level with the Nubian standing like a giant,
and, under the impulse of her innate cruelty, looked at him sweetly from
half-closed eyes.
He raised his hands to his forehead, so that a mark made by pearly teeth
showed upon his arm, and looked at her from head to foot and smiled as
the crimson swept her face. Then he gathered the full burden of her train
into his arms and followed her up the seven steps and spread it wide as
she sat down in the ivory chair, then knelt and kissed her knees and her
golden-sandalled feet.
She leant back and watched the thirty children climb on to the stone
stools, upon which had sat the thirty Holy Fathers centuries ago, and
looked down at the hawklike, eager men who watched her, and up to the
star-strewn, vaulted ceiling, from which hung silver lamps which drew
lustre from her jewels and her eyes and the precious stones glittering in
the columns.
Against the golden background of the Byzantine wall, with the great fans
moving slowly above her head, she was barbaric in her beauty, and not
for one moment did she or the men doubt that the white man had fallen a
victim to her enchantment.
She rose when Ralph Trenchard stood in the doorway looking across the
hall in bewilderment, and, holding out her hands, descended the steps,
her great glittering train spread out behind her like an enormous fan.
She walked slowly, whilst the men whispered remarks, which were better
left unprinted, the one to the other, and the fifteen mites leapt from
the stools, upon which had stood the prisoners from Damascus, and ran to
lift her train as she turned with her hand in Ralph Trenchard’s.
He looked at her from head to foot. He gazed at the superb figure, the
jewels, the beautiful face, the crimson-tipped fingers, and, with all the
perversity of the human, was suddenly overwhelmed with a longing for just
one glimpse of the girl he had loved, in her riding kit, with her sweet,
laughing, fair face turned up to the light of the stars.
“Thank God,” he said to himself as he walked up the steps by the side of
the beautiful Arabian. “Thank heaven this is the end of this awful time,
and I shall soon be riding back along the road I came with her, my Helen.”
He looked down at the men, to find their eyes fixed upon him, and
wondered vaguely at the feeling of tension that pervaded the place; then
forgot all about it at the sound of a drum outside the great door.
With great shouting and to the shrilling of reed pipes and the throbbing
of drums the dancers burst through the doorway. They had been enticed
across the desert by the biggest fee they had ever been offered in the
whole of their vagrant life, and had thoroughly enjoyed the blindfolding
and their mysterious entry into the strange camp where they had been so
lavishly entertained.
Men and women, youths and girls, virile, joyous, burned deep brown by the
sun and the storm, with the knowledge of life in their flashing eyes, the
love of adventure in their hearts and the call of great spaces in their
vagabond blood, they stood quite still for a moment and then moved.
They danced to the sound of the drum, the shrilling of reed pipes, the
clapping of hands, the beating of bare feet. They danced in groups, in
pairs; one, thin as a lath, supple as a snake, danced by herself, driving
the men wellnigh mad, so that the silver lamps swung to their shouting
until she dropped in a heap at the foot of the dais. They sang as they
danced, until the echoes of the wild Arabian love songs and battle
songs beat against the star-strewn, vaulted ceiling; they laughed and
clapped their hands in joy, and swayed and rocked to a great moaning;
they advanced to the foot of the dais, caring little, in the power of
their ancestry, which stretches back beyond the days of the Pharaohs, for
the imperious woman who sprang from Allah knew where, or the man who,
handsome as he was, came from a foreign land.
They danced for two hours. Danced to earn their huge fee, to amuse, to
entertain, to end in dancing for the sheer love of it.
In and out of the columns and amongst the men went their slender bare
feet to the flashing of knives, the clash of cymbals and the call of the
Arabian love songs. They met, they parted, they met again; whilst the
girl as thin as a lath, as supple as a snake, sprang up and stood upon
one spot, moving only from her waist upwards.
And as suddenly as they had come, as suddenly they departed, to the
rolling of the drums and the reed pipes’ sweet shrilling, whilst some of
the men crossed to the door to watch them descend the steps, and others
got up and moved about, restless under the excitation of the nerves
invariably caused by the _Ghowazy-Barameke_.
Followed a certain time set apart for the drinking of wines forbidden
by the Prophet, the eating of the sweetmeats and the lighting of
hubble-bubbles and cigarettes.
“You like it?” said Zarah, so softly, as Ralph Trenchard lit her
cigarette. He bent to catch her words, then drew his great ivory chair
nearer still and leaned towards her as he talked, upon which actions the
men who watched put their own construction.
“As gentle as the new-born tiger cub,” quoted Bowlegs as he helped
himself in right lordly fashion from the heaped-up tray offered him by
his third wife, who, being childless, filled the post of drudge to the
entire Bowleg family.
“As placid as the surface of the sands of death,” replied his neighbour
as he looked at Zarah and winked at Bowlegs. “Allah grant we split not
our sides with laughter when the claws of the tiger cub draw blood.”
“Or when he slips up to his neck in the sands of her displeasure.”
“What of the white woman? Has aught been prepared for her passing to
Paradise or _Johannam_?”
By spitting with vigour Bowlegs managed to interrupt the speaker.
“My heart is loth to send so fair a maid upon so long a journey. All
women are cats, longing to sharpen their claws upon each other. Let us
send her upon the road to Hutah, and so trick the gentle Zarah.”
“Nay....”
“Yea....”
Followed a heated _sotto voce_ discussion, with interludes of gambling
instigated by the Patriarch, who had grown a-weary of his new raiment, in
which he found it difficult to find the dice and counters. The gambling
spread right through the hall; the men were quiet, watching Zarah as she
played every note in the scale of woman’s charm to enthral the man at her
side, whilst he, thinking of Helen, replied mechanically to her questions.
And Helen, pale, with great shadows round her eyes, sat on her couch
with her hands clasped in a desperate effort to keep herself well under
control. For a week she had not been allowed outside the front of her
building, nor had she seen Zarah or caught a sign of Yussuf amongst the
rocks which towered around the little clearing behind.
When she had moved to the door or the windows she had met the negress,
who had pushed her back, and none too gently, whilst making sounds of
anger in her throat. Her food had become scanty and badly cooked; her
books had been taken one by one; she had been made to understand that to
bathe in the river, ride, or visit the dogs, which had learned to love
her, was forbidden.
When the shouts of laughter which greeted the dwarf with his tangle of
monkeys rang through the night air, she jumped from the couch and ran out
into the clearing at the back, whereupon, to her everlasting undoing, the
negress shifted her ungainly person into the direct centre of the doorway
in the front of the building and lost herself in a great disgruntlement,
whilst chewing the fragrant “_kaat_.”
Helen stopped dead in the middle of the clearing and pressed her hands
upon her mouth.
Swinging hand over hand, dropping noiselessly from rock to rock, came
Yussuf down the mountainside, with “His Eyes” upon his shoulders.
Fifteen feet above her they stood, side by side, upon a narrow ledge,
then, after a few whispered words, leapt like panthers and landed like
great cats upon the sand of the clearing. Noiselessly they crossed to
Helen, who stood, speechless, against the wall. In the merest whisper
Yussuf asked her a question and repeated the answer to “His Eyes.”
There was no sound as the youth crept to the door and peered in, nor
when, with his back to the wall and his dagger between his teeth, he
stole round the room, his eyes fixed on the surly negress lost in her
great disgruntlement. Neither did she make other sound than a little sigh
when, struck by Fate from behind, she fell forward into Eternity with her
mouth full of _kaat_.
“Quick, Excellency!” said Yussuf, when Helen cried out at the terrible
scene. “There is no time to lose upon sympathy. That stroke of the dagger
did but remove one who was but a little better than a beast and a little
less evil than she who blinded me. Spill not thy heart’s blood for such,
but hasten, in the name of Allah, hasten to the white man, who even now
is in the hands of the she-devil and my brethren, who know not what they
do.”
“White man! What white man?”
Helen walked close to Yussuf and stared up into his sightless face.
“White man!” she whispered, her face ashen through the tumult of her
heart. “What white man? In God’s name, in the name of Allah, tell me! Is
it—is it——”
Yussuf caught her and shook her as she reeled up against him.
“Thou art brave, white woman; be not a coward _now_, when thy man waits
for thee, surrounded by those who, inflamed with forbidden wine, will
strike him down for a misplaced word. It is this wise. In the few words
time and Fate allow me——”
Helen turned to “His Eyes,” who stood beside her, smiling and nodding his
head, whilst the blind man talked. Then she placed her hand in Yussuf’s.
“ ... rush not in, Excellency,” finished Yussuf as they moved towards
the door. “Listen to the words of the old man with the white hair and
venerable beard. Wait until the thoughts of my brethren are fixed upon
the white man, then—_then_ do as Allah the Merciful bids thee, and may
His blessing rest upon thee and thine throughout all time. I shall be
within the Hall, likewise ‘Mine Eyes,’ when he has well hid the body of
yon slave and has finished the task I have set him.”
Yussuf’s sandalled feet made no sound, the noise of Helen’s boots upon
the rocks was deadened by the shouting from above as they sped like deer
up the steep, deserted steps to the doorway of the Hall of Judgment.
With finger upon lips Yussuf slipped in unnoticed, leaving Helen in the
shadows, staring across the great chamber to the dais, where sat Zarah,
in all her barbaric loveliness, with Ralph Trenchard beside her.